[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/bn4g6e.jpg[/img]

stopped out on 2 contracts -90 x 2

[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/twssgp.jpg[/img]

[IMG]https://nexusfi.com/v/r98x7b.jpg[/IMG]



May re-enter if gold can find support. There is a potential triple bottom in place. For the size move I am targeting, my stop should really be at 1667, but I am not there yet. Slowly I am trying to increase my stop loss and my target range. It is a tough psychological barrier for me, especially knowing that I can trade net profitable gowing for smaller moves. But, I am pushing to have a much higher reward to risk per trade and am going to play this trade out.

[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/svwy4t.jpg[/img]


Indecision

[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/994uqy.jpg[/img]

Interesting to see such a complete reversal on morning volume. It may be related to the holiday trading, or could be trying to tell me something.

[img]https://nexusfi.com/v/cgb57v.jpg[/img]

[IMG]https://nexusfi.com/v/q7bd6u.jpg[/IMG]


Edit - this trade was closed a few minutes after at +2 X 2. Not a good time to enter and I was wrong to take this trade. Will watch on Monday.

GaryD 

I wanted to take time to get back to this, because I feel my previous answer was somewhat defensive of my personal strategy. I apologize if my reply came out harsher than I intended. At the time what I posted seemed constructive. My experience has brought me to where I feel that a technical system is less important than a belief system. But re-reading some of the past few days, I now view that as having defended my belief as a priority over answering your question. When I first posted on futures.io (formerly BMT), I was hoping to help myself through writing out what I do that seems to work for me, and also to see if that might help other traders. I have studied through multiple paid courses, and none of them really made me a trader. I did learn, and some of the information has been incredibly useful and has formed the basis on which I function today. But despite how much I paid or how hard I tried to emulate what I was taught, I really only saw how someone else approached the markets, learned how they traded, but I learned little about how I traded. More than once I have considered stopping posting to futures.io (formerly BMT), as I sometimes find it interferes with my trading. The obvious factor is that trying to type a commentary and export / upload screen shots takes time and is a distraction to what is happening on my trades. The less obvious hindrance is that it brings in a different psychological element to my trades; that someone else is watching. I used to be a performance musician who trained for 8-10 hours a day. But I always felt I played so much better sitting on my couch than being on stage. I played because It gave me pleasure, not because I wanted the attention, and I was actually very shy and uncomfortable playing in front of other people. I once had to audition for a top music school in front of a panel of staff members, and could barely function. I was sweating, trembling, stiff, nauseated. I supported myself as a professional for several years, but the larger the audience, the less comfortable I was. I was so much better in the studio where it was just me and and my instrument. I am ultimately a very reserved person, far more comfortable alone or with a few good friends than in a crowd. I found more than once where I took a live trade that was partially motivated by an underlying pressure within to post something. I have found that I have passed on a good trade because it may not have followed rules that I hoped to pass along in this thread. Posting trades on futures.io (formerly BMT) brings about a lot of personal issues; What if I am wrong? What if I receive criticism? What if someone takes my trades and loses money? What if I look foolish? I am not a system trader, so if I am wrong, I can't push the responsibility on anything but me. And anyone with internet access could watch. When I was previously ready to stop posting trades on futures.io (formerly BMT), feeling like I had shared what I knew and it was time to move on, I decided to push through it. I had uncovered a new weak area of myself and felt it would be good to have so much more perceived responsibility for my trades. And so, I had big Mike move my thread to the journal section and now consider it more of a training tool for myself than anything. Posting chart after chart, before, during and after my trades, causes me to view myself differently. Many times I go back and read my own posts and see where I could have done better, or if I did what I thought I was doing. I may post some charts to go over why I chose long over short, but wanted to get back to you with an explanation, and a different answer; Yes, the pink lines could be a 1-2-3, and yes, this move up could be a wave 4. If gold seems to top and reverse at an expected area of a wave 4 completion, and we can confirm it on some timeframe, it would be a solid strategy. The start of a potential wave 4 on a minor chart can also be the start of a wave 5 on a higher timeframe. The higher timeframe gives the greater reward to risk potential, and so I tend to believe in that first, and then question myself around the potential top of the minor wave 4. Give several techincal traders the same chart, and you'll likely get many conflicting but still valid arguements. Your analysis may be more accurate than mine in this instance. Your methods may be more accurate than mine in the long run. As traders we must choose a side and run with it, and assume responsibility for our decisions. This recent gold trade was purely driven by the fact that I had a new toy called Ichimoku. I don't trade gold, and I don't know Ichimoku trading other than what I have read over the past few days, but I took my shiny new Ichimoku chart and scrolled through the markets I keep in my instrument manager, and gold was the first I saw that gave me a chance for a test drive. Then I saw that gold was in a possible w5 position, and was going to ride that direction until it proved it wasn't, which it may still do. Thanks for you post and keep studying.

Gary,

I appreciate you coming back to my post, but it wasn't necessary. At first I was bothered by your original reply, but as I continued to read it,I felt as though that maybe I was disrupting the purpose of the thread, which is your journal. The original question/post was never intended to question your methods or trade selection. I was questioning the wave count aspect, but not because I felt that I was right, but because I am continually confused be EW and wish I never heard of the methodology. Also, you had made a comment about different traders seeing different things in the same chart. Nothing could be more true than that. I was seeing weakness and you were seeing strength.

Reading your other posts about the long trade, and your desired targets, I've come to understand that it doesn't really mater who is right. One just needs to be right enough to achieve a target. Maybe I'm not right about that, I don't know.

As far as the feelings and thoughts you have had about posting to a journal, you are not alone. I used to have a journal and then stopped posting a long time ago. Still trying to find "my method" and worried about posting negative results. Sorry, don't mean to get off topic.

I think its good you decided to continue to post and I enjoy the posts and the analysis.

David

David_R 

Gary, I appreciate you coming back to my post, but it wasn't necessary. At first I was bothered by your original reply, but as I continued to read it,I felt as though that maybe I was disrupting the purpose of the thread, which is your journal. The original question/post was never intended to question your methods or trade selection. I was questioning the wave count aspect, but not because I felt that I was right, but because I am continually confused be EW and wish I never heard of the methodology. Also, you had made a comment about different traders seeing different things in the same chart. Nothing could be more true than that. I was seeing weakness and you were seeing strength. Reading your other posts about the long trade, and your desired targets, I've come to understand that it doesn't really mater who is right. One just needs to be right enough to achieve a target. Maybe I'm not right about that, I don't know. As far as the feelings and thoughts you have had about posting to a journal, you are not alone. I used to have a journal and then stopped posting a long time ago. Still trying to find "my method" and worried about posting negative results. Sorry, don't mean to get off topic. I think its good you decided to continue to post and I enjoy the posts and the analysis. David

I started this thread as more instructional, so no worries about posting here. Even the conversations that occur within this thread are a nice addition to an ongoing journal. It allows me to see things differently. There is no wrong post here. I intended for my original reply to be constructive, but after reading it later thought it possibly had a harder edge than I felt it did while I was typing.

When I type in this post, I see no one. I am alone in a room and conversing by keyboard with a computer screen to people I don't know a thing about. I have tried to reach out to a few traders to meet in person and have a few drinks, talk about trading in a low key environment, but for some reason that seems to be the end of the conversation. lol!

I am a firm believer that succeeding at trading requires a combination of skills, and that possibly the most important of those is to believe in your trade. My typical winning trade percentage is only around 60%. A lot of what counts as a loss for me are times I enter and then close with 8-15 ticks down, but my normal initial stop loss is 30-40 ticks in CL, which I attempt to tighten to 15-20 fairly quickly. But my average loss is less than my average win. And that is possibly the biggest factor in how I trade profitably.

I have been following the large swings for some time now, but never attempt to take more than 100 ticks +/- in any single trade. That is something I am wanting to change about my trading, and my current pursuit of a swing trade in gold is pushing me outside my normal comfort zone. But, I have tracked enough large moves that I am developing more faith in them. My desire for immediate gratification and/or the release I feel when I close a profitable trade is the biggest thing holding me back. It is like 50-60 tick profits have become my drug of choice, and it is a hard addiction for me to break, and I am fighting myself somewhat in an effort for transformation.

For example, there was a resistance point in gold I noted a few days ago that held flawlessly at a 618. I would have loved to take that short, and that is right in my comfort zone; defined resistance, downward minor trend. But I made myself wait for a larger trade on the higher trend. So, if something in my subconscious caused me to respond to you with the feeling of some friction, what possibly surfaced is some of my own re-training of myself. Maybe I was re-affirming my goal to focus on the bigger picture.

I can't remember where I heard this, have done way too many trading courses, but someone said something like; when we refer to ourselves as "traders" it brings about the feeling that we need to be doing something. We are here to "trade", not to "watch".

My current training for myself is to look for trades where I watch more and trade less. I want a reward to risk of 5 times to 1, or better. To get that, by my experience, takes some getting used to being wrong often. But I was never able to maintain ongoing profitability until I was willing to be wrong more than I wanted to be. And still, that is the weakest part of my trading.

This may sound insane, but I am actually trying to shift to being right closer to 40% of the time, and that is proving to be ridiculously tough for me. Of course the reward to risk would have to be larger, but over and over I see my 50-60 tick temptation, and I become weak. Possbly the weirdest part of my obsession is that I am taking a proftable style and wanting to ignore it, or at least change it.

I am reading a book on trading psychology right now, and in the first chapter it gives an example of how in school we need 90% to get an "A", and that we are tested for a drivers license, or a professional license, or a credit score. We are taught early, and reinforced perpetually, to strive for high win percentages. 60% wins equates to a "D-", and I seem determined to strive for an "F".

Thanks for you post David, and for your good spirit.

Gary, am working on releasing a new screenshot capture app for futures.io (formerly BMT) users (for Windows), will let you capture your screen, mark it up, and paste it on futures.io (formerly BMT) with one click instead of the many clicks it takes now. Just FYI. I will let you know when it is ready to test out. It will have trend lines, fibonacci, and other drawing and mark up tools built-in.

Mike